December 07, 2008

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said
Sunday she regrets the U.S. relied on flawed intelligence as the basis for
going to war in Iraq and took partial responsibility for mismanaging the
post-invasion occupation.

Oh, brother.

Aside from the Idiot in Chief, who is likewise taking a much deserved Defeat Lap and saying similarly stupid and nonsensical things, is there anyone as despicable as this woman?

She was the National Security Advisor. It was her job and her greatest responsibility to assess whether or not the basis for going to war, which she peddled non-stop on every Tee Vee show for months in 2002 and 2003, was flawed.

And the intelligence that was the basis for going to war in Iraq was so flawed that it required the Bush administration to make nine hundred and thirty five public and intentional misstatements and misrepresentations of that intelligence in order to sell the American people on the idea that immediate war in Iraq was necessary.

The intelligence was so flawed that when the Bush administration provided Colin Powell with evidence to present to the United Nations Security Council it was so laughable that even the good soldier Powell threw pages of his speech into the air and declared: "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit!"

The intelligence was so flawed that, nine months before the illegal and un-Constitutional war Bush declared on Iraq, the British had determined that it was bogus and being manipulated by the Bush administration.

The intelligence was so flawed and so weak that, just weeks before Bush and his National Security Advisor kicked the weapons inspectors out of Iraq and rushed the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary war, sixty percent of Americans still thought we should give weapons inspectors more time to determine if war was really necessary.

The intelligence was so flawed that the man who provided it to Bush and his National Security Advisor was disgraced by being forced to accept the "highest civil award given to men and women of exceptional merit, integrity and achievement", the Medal of Freedom.

The intelligence was so flawed that the Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, whose only job was oversight of our intelligence agencies during the the rush to war, was likewise disgraced by his failure to ensure that the CIA provided reliable and accurate intelligence to the President and his National Security Advisor. As a result of his profound and regrettable incompetence, he was appointed to head the CIA.

The Bush administration did not rely on flawed intelligence. The Bush administration, including Condi Rice, manufactured flawed intelligence. They made it up, they packaged it, and they sold it to the American people. And it was still so shitty and weak and flimsy, that after a nine month and mulit-billion dollar media blitz, most Americans still weren't entirely sold on this lemon.

And now Bush and his Magic Eight Ball want to express their regrets at relying on "flawed intelligence"? They want to act like they were victims of "flawed intelligence"?

Fucking assholes.

We certainly had an "intelligence" failure during the tenure of Bush and his moronic National Security Advisor Rice. But it didn't involve information gathering.

November 14, 2008

"Every Senator will have to vote the way he or she believes
they should," Leahy said, in a reference to the upcoming vote on
Lieberman's fate in the Dem caucus next week. "I'm one who does not feel
that somebody should be rewarded with a major chairmanship after doing what he
did."

"I felt some of the attacks that he was involved in against
Senator Obama...went way beyond the pale," Leahy continued. "I
thought they were not fair, I thought they were not legitimate, I thought they
perpetuated some of these horrible myths that were being run about Senator
Obama."

"I would feel that had I done something
similar," Leahy concluded, "that I would not be chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee in the next Congress."

And Leahy's right, and if the world worked the way it's supposed to work, Joe Lieberman would be stripped of his chairmanship. But, then again, if the world worked the way it's supposed to work, Joe Lieberman wouldn't even be a Senator anymore. So forget that.

And forget justice. And forget punishment.

Joe Lieberman can not be allowed to retain his chairmanship because Joe Lieberman can not be trusted.

At all.

Joe Lieberman is not an honorable man. He didn't just campaign against and question the judgement, and the patriotism any old Democrat for president. No, he did those things to a Senator who had come to his aid and campaigned on his behalf when Joe needed it the most.

And that's how Joe Lieberman repaid Barack Obama.

And Joe Lieberman is not a man of his word. In 2006, he campaigned for the Democratic primary saying that he had the interests of the Democratic party at heart and would be the best candidate to help a Democrat get elected president in 2008.

And then he spoke at the Republican National Convention.

Joe Lieberman will say anything to keep his chairmanship and it means nothing. The words coming out of his mouth mean nothing to him and they should mean nothing to Democrats, if they have any brains.

Joe Lieberman does not feel bound by his words. He's shown this again and again and again. He does not consider saying one thing and doing another thing to be lying. He considers that to a noble act of conscience.

Yes, Joe Lieberman feels he is honor bound to lie about his intentions. He's told us this much. And that is the only thing Joe Lieberman has ever said that we should believe to be true.

No matter what Joe Lieberman says now, if he is allowed to retain his chairmanship, he will fuck Democrats at the worst possible moment in the worst possible way.

Before the 2010 Congressional elections or the 2012 Presidential election, he will use his chairmanship to hold some kind of bullshit made for Fox News hearings that will be scandalous, shocking, damaging to Democrats, and about as truthful as Ned Lamont crashing Holy Joe's servers in 2006.

Which Joe lied about even after he knew it wasn't true.

And there won't be anything Democrats can do to stop it once Joe starts his ratfucking payback for being voted out of the party. By then, it'll be too late.

Joe Lieberman is a proud liar. And a man without any honor or conscience at all. And he has been, in 1998, in 2000, in 2004, and 2008 almost gleeful in his scummy betrayals of his party, his supporters, and his friends.

The only way to stop Joe Lieberman from giving Democrats one last great assfucking on his way out the door is to never let the viscous little grinning garden gnome of a weasel one more chance to do what he always does.

November 10, 2008

In a survey of 751 CEOs published in October, the magazine found that 74 percent feared the consequences of an Obama presidency versus just 19 percent who worried about John McCain assuming the Oval Office. The surveyed executives feared that Obama's emphasis on big government and his plans to hike capital-gains taxes on big earners would stifle growth and job creation.

Oh, my! America's CEO's, who have done such an outstanding job growing the economy and creating jobs with their companies, such as Enron, WorldCom, General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, HealthSouth, CountryWide, AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Circuit City, and IndyMac, are concerned about the consequences of an Obama presidency.

As opposed to what? The world wide financial meltdown and looming Second Great Depression caused by the unfettered, free markets of the Bush presidency? What are they afraid of? That Obama is going to require them to file a finger from their first born along with their 10-K?

Well, whatever it is, we should definitely listen to these geniuses! After all, these are the guys who just bankrupted the world all the while earning about four hundred times what the average worker makes. Not including perks.

The average worker, by the way, has been awesome. So we're told. The average worker is about the only part of the economy that is fundamentally sound. Kind of makes you wonder why he or she not only isn't getting paid more, but why he or she is actually getting paid less, doesn't it?

Despite the fact that the average worker keeps producing more. Unlike his or her CEO counterpart. Who keeps producing bankruptcy, fraud, and failure.

Steve Jobs, excepted.

So what do these geniuses, these Masters Of The Universe as well as of Business Administration, who boldly led us to where no one ever wanted to go, say? They fear an Obama presidency will raise capital gains taxes! And why do they fear such a thing? Because that will undoubtably stifle growth and job creation that this country hasn't had under the current low capital gains taxes!

Really?

It's all about the growth and job creation, is it? It's all about the good of our great nation.

Obviously, Obama lacks their altruism.

Death,
taxes, and ceo pay hikes. Despite deteriorating economic conditions and
expectations many companies would pay out less to top officers, chief
executives at publicly traded companies of all sizes saw an increase in
compensation last year, buoyed largely by gains from the exercise of stock
options…But the
amounts executives actually took home last year don't jibe with the performance
of the companies. Operating earnings of S&P 500 companies fell by 5.9%
during the year, according to data from Standard & Poor's.The
total compensation figures measured by the Corporate Library include the value
of exercised options, vesting of equity awards and changes in deferred
compensation, in addition to salary and bonus. The overall rise in pay, Mr.
Hodgson said, was driven by gains on stock options that executives cashed in
last year…Indeed,
large company CEOs earned total pay packages with a median value of $12.2
million last year, with only about $3.8 million coming in the form of salary
and bonus payments. The remaining $8.3 million in equity compensation is more
than double the median $3.8 million paid to small-cap CEOs.Some
CEOs received much fatter raises last year: The Corporate Library found that 29
executives—including former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and Apple CEO Steve
Jobs—received pay increases of 1,000% or more.Mr.
Jobs, who collected his customary salary of $1 last year, recorded $14.6
million in gains from exercising option awards. That was a 1.5 billion percent
increase from 2006, the largest percentage increase for any executive in the
study.Ms.
Whitman exercised about 5.7 million options at a profit of $117 million in
2007, her last full year as CEO. That's a 3,741% pay increase from 2006. (Ms.
Whitman had not previously exercised any options, going back to eBay's first
available proxy filing in 1999.)

Or it could be that the CEO's of America's largest companies are earning anywhere from nine to one hundred and seventeen million dollars a year from stock options. On which, unless they're stupid, they've been paying a 15% capital gains tax.

Which is far less than their 35% top marginal rate and would put their tens of millions of dollars of earnings in the same tax bracket as a fundamentally sound, highly productive worker making between $32,000 and $78,000.

When they say growth, they mean growth of their personal wealth. When they say job creation, they mean jobs driving limos for CEOs, jobs cooking and cleaning for CEOs, jobs tending the lawns and cleaning the pools of CEOs.

I'm sure they are very personally concerned about the consequences of an Obama presidency.

And these are the same jerks, who, the second they bankrupt their companies, go running to the government for protection from their creditors and bailouts from money provided by taxes.

October 10, 2008

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (CNN) -- Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin abused her power as Alaska's governor by trying to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the state police, a state investigator's report concluded Friday.

"Gov. Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda," the report states…

…[I]t states that her efforts to get Wooten fired broke a state ethics law that bars public officials from pursuing personal interest through official action.

The bipartisan Legislative Council, which commissioned the investigation after Monegan was fired, unanimously adopted the 263-page public report after a marathon executive session Friday. About 1,000 more pages of documents compiled during the inquiry will remain confidential, the council's chairman, state Sen. Kim Elton, said.

Rep. John Coghill, a Republican who criticized the handling of the investigation, said it was "well-done professionally."

First of all, I'd like to say that this bi-partisan report by Alaska's Legislative Council is clearly just one more outrageous attack on Sarah Palin's family by the Obama campaign for no other reason than she is a woman, who likes babies.

Second of all, this entirely politically motivated investigation, orchestrated by terrorist sleeper cells Ayers planted in both political parties in Alaska in the 1960's for the sole purpose of destroying, in a phony bi-partisan fashion, any populist American loving politician who might emerge in 2008 is completely contradicted by the findings of Palin herself, who, unlike the terrorists and their pals in the Legislative Council who wrote the first draft of their treasonous lies in Ayers' living room, was actually present when she didn't do all that bad stuff that didn't happen.

And who are you going to believe? Barry "Black Power" Hussein "I'm the Dictator of Iraq" Osama "I'm a Terrorist's or a Terrorist's Pal" or a woman who had absolutely no motive whatsoever to have a guy fired, except for a hate fueled custody and divorce family matter?

Honestly, you can't get any more objective in any investigation than when you, yourself, are the subject of that investigation.

Do you really think Bush would have done that if his investigation hadn't found they were guilty of compromising national security?

Ergo: do you really think Palin would exonerate herself if she wasn't really innocent?

Of course not!

Talk about your October Surprise!

It's one thing to call a sitting United States Senator a terrorist, a radical communist, a traitor, an "Islamist", or an American hater, but it's another thing altogether to let the people of Alaska release a bipartisan report concluding that America's cheerleader, Sarah Palin, probably broke the law!

That's just dirty pool.

Which means it's entirely Obama's fault when Palin and McCain are forced to accuse him of treason and demand that he be executed by a military tribunal. And if the military is not sufficiently loyal to kill him, then it's entirely Obama's fault if one of Palin or McCain's supporters kills Obama for forcing McCain and Palin to whip up their supporters into a homicidal frenzy.

December 03, 2007

A government money market debacle unfolding in Florida is raising questions about former governor and presidential brother Jeb Bush's possible involvement in the mess…

In the past few days, municipalities have withdrawn roughly $9 billion, nearly a third of the $28 billion fund (which is similar to a money market fund) controlled by the Florida's State Board of Administration (SBA). The run on the fund was triggered by worries that a percentage of the portfolio contained debt that had defaulted.

A majority of this paper was sold to SBA by Lehman Brothers (nyse: LEH - news - people ). Bush, as the state's top elected official, served on a three-member board that oversaw the SBA until he retired as governor in January. In August, Bush was hired as a consultant to the bank. Lehman spokesperson Kerrie Cohen, speaking on behalf of Bush, said they had no comment and would not say when the bank had sold Florida the paper. SBA did not return calls.

While SBA wouldn't confirm, Bloomberg reported the amount of debt in default is around $900 million.

Of course! Where ever there's a Bush and public money, you can count on some sort of massive fraud that costs the taxpayers billions.

Always.

You've got George, Sr. and the S&L fiasco of the eighties, which required over a billion dollars of taxpayer money to bail out his son Neil's Silverado Savings and Loan alone after Neil's own pardners defaulted on a bunch of lousy loans Neil made to them.

You've got George, Sr., again, in the eighties with this incredibly bizarre intelligence operation run out of the Vice President's office, involving drugs, selling weapons to terrorists, and funding the worst kind of depraved murdering thugs the South American military juntas could turn loose on Central America.

Then, in the end, everyone got pardoned or sweet immunity deals, before Bush, Sr. sent in the United States military to take out Noriega for reasons that have never, to this day, been made clear to the American People.

The taxpayers got the bill. God only knows what the real point of all that was.

You've got George, Jr. making a fortune off of the Arlington Sports Authority, using the government power of eminent domain and taxpayer subsidies to seize private property for the benefit of himself and his pardners.

You've got George and Jeb defrauding taxpayers and using public property to benefit their family friends by overpaying for worthless gas and oil rights in the Everglades and pretending it's all about protecting the environment.

You've got Neil poking his ugly, greedy mug back up from under whatever rock he slithered under to cash in on his big brudder's No Child Left Behind thing.

You've got the unprecedented, inefficient, out of control private contracting of government functions under George W., basically using taxpayer money to subsidize non-competitive Republican bidnessmen.

You had George W. trying to channel your taxpayer provided Social Security to his family friends and associates on Wall Street, just like he did with your taxpayer provided Medicare to his family friends and associates in the pharmaceutical industry.

And on and on...

Basically, this is an entire family that sees the Federal gubment as nothing more than a giant, bottomless piggy bank for their own personal bidness schemes. This is a family that views the Great American People as nothing more than captive, involuntary investors for them, their friends, their families, and their supporters.

The Bush family truly is our own American Royalty--a bunch of corrupt, jug-eared, inbred layabouts making and preserving a fortune by sucking at the gubment tit.

And how do they get away with it?

By selling the ignorant rubes, over and over again, the lie that the Bush's hate taxes! By telling the gullible rubes that, even though gubment spending is going up, taxes are going down!

Watch them go down, rubes!

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It's expanding by about $1.4 billion a day -- or nearly $1 million a minute.

What's that mean to you?

It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.

Except that every man, woman, child and infant in the United States doesn't pay taxes. There are 300 million Americans. About 100 million filed tax returns last year. So that would be about $90,000 per taxpayer. Except that not everyone who files a return pays taxes. So, there's that, too.

Even if you've escaped the recent housing and credit crunches and are coping with rising fuel prices, you may still be headed for economic misery, along with the rest of the country. That's because the government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion…

[I]nterest payments keep compounding and could in time squeeze out most other government spending -- leading to sharply higher taxes or a cut in basic services like Social Security and other government benefit programs. Or all of the above…

The national debt -- the total accumulation of annual budget deficits -- is up from $5.7 trillion when President George W. Bush took office in January 2001 and it will top $10 trillion sometime right before or right after he leaves in January 2009.

Yep. That's right. In eight years, Bush nearly doubled the national debt.

That's $10,000,000,000,000.00, or one digit more than an odometer-style "national debt clock" near New York's Times Square can handle. When the privately owned automated clock was activated in 1989, the national debt was $2.7 trillion.

It only gets worse…

Despite vows in both parties to restrain federal spending, the national debt as a percentage of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product has grown from about 35 percent in 1975 to around 65 percent today. By historical standards, it's not proportionately as high as during World War II -- when it briefly rose to 120 percent of GDP -- but it's a big chunk of liability.

It's a "fair and balanced" article, so naturally there's a bunch of bullshit alongside the facts. You can feel the writer straining to make this a bi-partisan problem.

The national debt was 35% of GDP in 1975, and from 1976 to 1980, Carter paid down the national debt. Then, from 1981 until 1993, tax hatin' Republicans ran up the national debt, all the while deregulatin', and wheelin', and dealin' and makin' money hand over fist with tax payer money!

Everybody got rich!

The taxpayers got the bill.

Which an ol' "tax and spend" Democrat, Bill Clinton, started to pay off. In fact, he not only started to pay it off, but he had Alan Greenspan worried that it was being paid off too fast. Clinton bequeathed a $230 billion and growing surplus to Bush that, with mild growth, would pay off our entire debt by 2012.

And Bush took that--I mean, literally took it after he lost the general election--big surplus and healthy economy and proceeded to double our national debt. In six years of Republican leadership--four years of which the Republicans controlled every branch of our government.

So, no, it's not a bi-partisan problem. Republicans spend more than Democrats. Period. It's a fact.

And when the government spends money, whether it presents you with the bill or it borrows the money, it's taxed you.

And since 1980, the Republicans have been taxing Americans into bankruptcy.

Republicans don't hate taxes. They love taxes. They might personally hate paying them. But they love spending taxpayer money. And no Republicans love taxing Americans more than the Bush family.

The only thing the Bush family hates about taxes is when taxpayer money actually gets spent on taxpayers. It seems like such a waste. When it could be spent on them.

June 26, 2007

I can't tell which is worse--the rampant corruption, the unrepentant lying, or all the crying.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Interior Department's former No. 2 official was sentenced to 10 months in prison Tuesday for lying to senators in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, the highest administration official sentenced in the probe.

J. Steven Griles, who was the department's deputy secretary, had pleaded guilty to obstructing a congressional investigation, and a federal judge said he continued to make excuses about his lies.

''Even now you continue to minimize and try to excuse your conduct,'' U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle told Griles before doubling the five-month person prison term he and prosecutors had agreed on…

With family and supporters holding hands in the front row of a packed courtroom, Griles choked up and wept as he asked for leniency.

What is it with these guys? It's like having the government run by my all time five worst girlfriends. They cheat, they lie, they deny they lied, they admit they lied, but deny they denied that they lied, they admit that they lied about denying that they denied they lied, they admit they lied and kept on lying about lying about lying, but they blame it on the drugs and alcohol and then, finally, you.

Huvelle seemed frustrated, however, as Griles and his attorneys tried to deflect blame for his inaccurate testimony. If lawmakers had only provided Griles with documents showing the extent of his relationship with Abramoff, defense attorneys said, his testimony would have been accurate.

Or, in other words, Griles would have told the truth, if the Senate had told him they already knew what the truth was.

Gee, no wonder Ann Coulter calls John Edwards a faggot! He's a poor boy, came from nothing, made a success of himself, lost a son, and now his wife is dying--and not one time did he break down and publicly cry or check into rehab.

What a pussy!

I don't know if the modern Gee Oh Pee has a theme song, but, if they don't, I nominate:

But puhleeeeeeeaseI know that I committed perjuryBut puhleeeeeeeaseDon't send me to the penitentiary...

Doesn't this sniveling little bitch know that there's no crying in hardball?

Never mind that this Reagan worshipping, Morning In America, patriotic, optimistic Republican, who has been a major player in sending 3000 public serving Americans to their early graves, gets in front of the Clinton School of Public Service and, weeping for the death of his own career, tells young Americans that public service is "not worth it".

While we still have 135,000 Americans in Kevlar in the desert fighting and bleeding and dying in their public service.

This guy was a political hitman for Karl Rove. And he's crying about being a casualty of politics???

Honestly, are there any people more pathetic or disgusting in modern American life than high ranking officials of the Bush administration?